eureka’s Reviews > Are Prisons Obsolete? > Status Update

"While the convict lease system was legally abolished, its structures of exploitation have reemerged in the patterns of privatization, and, more generally, in the wide-ranging corporatization of punishment that has produced a prison industrial complex"

WORD.

in what she calls "prison industrial complex", davis argues that corporations that are constantly in search of cheap labor have their claws on the "punishment industry"; and mass imprisonment generates "profits".

why is there no great outcry?
1. because we are designed to think that a civilized life without prison is impossible and absurd.
2. our idea of prison comes from our exposure to media

"are we willing to relegate ever larger numbers of people from racially oppressed communities to an isolated existence marked by authoritarian regimes, violence, disease, and technologies of seclusion that produce severe mental instability?"

interesting.

it is the author's hope to encourage people to question their assumptions about prison.